Radios such as hand-held two-way radios are utilized within a variety of public safety environments, such as law enforcement, fire rescue, and emergency medical environments to name a few. Currently, public safety personnel working in the field use two physical radios in order to monitor more than one channel at a time. However, using two radios can be cumbersome, and managing the communications from two radios independently can be challenging and may lead to confusion. Using two radios can even be more challenging during potentially critical situations as communications on such radios may comprise critical information and therefore may require quicker response or acknowledgment from incident commanders. In such situations, it is possible that an incident commander may miss critical information received on a particular radio when handling both radios simultaneously.
Accordingly, there is a need for an improved means for managing communications during a potential critical situation.
Skilled artisans will appreciate that elements in the figures are illustrated for simplicity and clarity and have not necessarily been drawn to scale. For example, the dimensions of some of the elements in the figures may be exaggerated relative to other elements to help to improve understanding of embodiments of the present disclosure.
The apparatus and method components have been represented where appropriate by conventional symbols in the drawings, showing only those specific details that are pertinent to understanding the embodiments of the present disclosure so as not to obscure the disclosure with details that will be readily apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art having the benefit of the description herein.